Super Mario Odyssey has made Mario into a parkour god

Gone are the days when Mario could only run, jump and shoot fireballs. In Super Mario Odyssey, Mario can do anything. Literally.

Since the launch of Super Mario Odyssey on Oct. 27, Nintendo fans worldwide have jumped headfirst into the new adventure. A new Mario game on a new Nintendo console, especially one that received such glowing reviews? It’s an exciting time to be a gamer.

It’s also an exciting time to be a games writer, mostly because we can’t wait to see what players discover as they immerse themselves in a game. And it’s immediately clear just a couple minutes into Super Mario Odyssey that it is a game packed both full of things to discover and ways to immerse.

In fact, one of the biggest positives about it is that it gives you free reign to approach it however you want. It accommodates everyone’s different play style by giving you a fun, colorful and open environment to explore, and by imbuing Mario with an extremely diverse set of movements.

Because of Mario’s expanded abilities, Odyssey becomes an experimental playground where we start to forget that there’s a princess to save and instead ask ourselves: What is Mario capable of doing and what is he not? It turns out for those who have exceptional gameplay skills and who think out-of-the-box, Mario is capable of quite a bit.

Meet the new Mario, a parkour legend.

There’s no right way to play Odyssey, and the game delightfully leans into that. The game feels like it’s meant for those who like the push the boundaries of what games are capable of.

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Take for example, this GIF shared by Redditor Darkspine99. This part of the game usually asks you to take control of a Bullet Bill to fly across the open space. However, as we’ve said before, there’s no right way to play this game and the player almost successfully gets Mario safely to the other side just by using a series of jumps.

Odyssey, in fact, rewards players for being able to accomplish what seemed impossible. YouTuber HelixSnake manages to parkour Mario up onto a platform that most players wouldn’t even think of attempting to scale. And for his efforts, he is rewarded.

Of course, not everyone is a stuntman. Some just want to try for the sake of seeing if it can be done, and that’s just fine as well.

It seems one of the more popular feats to try takes place in New Donk City, the by now well-known New York City-inspired part of the game. If you stand at certain vantage points in the city, you’ll be able to spot a rooftop far in the distance surrounded on all sides by fog. Mario is able to reach that distant rooftop through a warp pipe, but wouldn’t it be more fun to try and jump there?

Don’t think it’s possible? Think again.

What an odyssey, indeed.